


Endlessly

by DaifukuBun



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: M/M, apocalypse au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 04:07:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10756392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaifukuBun/pseuds/DaifukuBun
Summary: The snow falls in sheets, like pieces of shredded paper. It’s slow, but it’s heavy, and the absence of wind is deafening. It’s like the air has suddenly gone still.





	Endlessly

“Yeah… it’s pretty cool. I think you should come with me, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata scratches at his left shoulder, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He stares at Nanami, and she stares back, awake, but in her pajamas. It’s quite a miracle that she’s up this early, and in such wakeful spirits, too.

“You didn’t even tell me what’s going on. You just keep telling me to follow you. Where are we going, exactly?”

“The roof.”

Hinata blinks. “The  _ roof?” _

“Yup.”

“Nanami, the roof is restricted.”

The girl puffs out her cheeks, looking down and fixing her pajamas. Their soft pink clashes with the forest green of the dormitory hallway.

“I know that, Hinata-kun. Togami-san unlocked the roof for this.” she looks up again, her face falling into its natural deadpan. “It’s really,  _ really  _ cool.”

Thinking for just a split second, Hinata stares at his friend. Then, he turns around, leaving the door open a gap. “Alright, alright. Let me put a shirt on.”

 

*

 

_ “Snoooow!”  _ Mioda cheers. She stares straight up into the sky, her arms spread out and her palms cupped like dishes. “It’s so  _ cold,  _ like Byakuya-chan’s heart!”

This earns a scoff out of Togami. “Hilarious.”

“It’s… snowing.” Hinata says. He, too, stares up into the grey, cloudy abyss that is the sky. A moderate speck of snow lands on the tip of his nose, and without thinking, he wipes away the moisture with his wrist.

“Yup.” Nanami says. She’s got one hand cupped in the air, and a bright collection of snow atop her head. “It’s cool, right?”

Hinata coughs, looking at her incredulously. “Sure, it’s cool. But it’s  _ July.”  _

“That’s why it’s so cool!” Souda chimes in, making Hinata jump. He had been right next to him, and he hadn’t even noticed. “We can build an igloo, man! Igloos in July!”

Hinata looks at him for a while. He, too, has a pile of snow atop his head. While it looks quite fluffy on Nanami, it just looks like dandruff on Souda. 

After a while, his gaze returns to the sky. The flakes of snow scatter, random, like a swarm of flying bugs. Or, they disperse, like the embers of a firework. Regardless, it seems to cause an odd hush. There are no cars on the roads below, and while the stoplights continuously change and the roads still signal to be crossed, none ever come. It’s so quiet, that whenever somebody speaks, it sounds like a shout into the dark.

“S’cool.” Owari pipes up. She yawns loudly, mouth agape. “I can go snowboarding. But not now, I’m gonna get breakfast.”

Hinata blinks. It’s about time for breakfast, isn’t it. For the last time, he stares deeply into the sky, confused and oddly excited. It’s unheard of, snow in July. Really weird, but yeah, really cool. Everyone starts filing back inside, chattering amongst themselves. 

“... it’s too cold for me.”

Hinata turns at the voice, finding Komaeda with his arms folded, looking at the sky in distaste. He clicks his tongue, then, shoes crunching in the gathering snow. “See you later, Hinata-kun.” he says, meeting their eyes and offering an amicable smile before following the others. 

 

*

 

“Of course I saw it.” Hanamura says, sliding a glass bowl of yogurt across the counter. Sonia catches it easily, happily noting the small raspberry placed on top of it, right in the center. “I drove here earlier this morning, after all.”

The sixteen of them are gathered in the dining room, Hanamura cooking, as usual. He smiles despite the stress of the current situation. 

“I still can’t believe it.” Kuzuryuu says. Next to him, Pekoyama nods.

“It’s hard to comprehend.” she says. “The forecasts said nothing. It came from nowhere, and it...”

She trails off, and Hinata doesn’t blame her. He stares at his vegetables like he’s about to be sick. Across the table, Nanami plays on her handheld system silently. 

Kuzuryuu decides to speak up again. “If this is a dream, it’s really fuckin’ vivid.”

Hinata looks out the window. The snow falls in sheets, like pieces of shredded paper. It’s slow, but it’s heavy, and the absence of wind of wind is deafening.

It’s like the air had suddenly gone still. 

“How long do you think we’ll be stuck inside?” he airs, talking to everyone. Nanami looks up for a second, before silently going back to her game. “I mean, once the weather calms down, obviously…” he answers himself, before continuing. “But I have a feeling that that’d be longer than we’d like.”

“It’s not like it’s illegal to go outside.” Hanamura says. He stretches his arms and removes his apron, walking around the counter and hopping onto the barstool next to Sonia. “I’m still planning to sleep in my own bed tonight.” 

Kuzuryuu quirks an eyebrow. “How are you gonna drive? The plows won’t be ready until tomorrow.”

Hanamura starts, before recovering himself. “Hmhm, I’ll manage.”

“Whatever.”

Sonia breathes in a loud breath, before quieting down, as if she was about to say something but decided against it. She looks down at her shoes, hanging off the edge of her stool.

“Yes, Sonia-san?” Souda pipes. The pale girl glances at him, before looking away, thoughtful. 

“It’s just…” she places a hand beneath her chin. “I do not think it is wise to be so gloomy, like we are. Though it is scary… I believe we must persevere.”

“That’s right, that’s right!” Souda exclaims. He smiles widely, playing with the braid on the side of his head. “Doesn’t it smell great in here? There are still so many great things going on!”

“Oho, I’m glad you’ve noticed the heavenly aroma of my cuisine!” Hanamura beams, and the chilled air in the room seems to grow lighter. Perhaps, even, a little warmer. 

 

*

 

“You need to wash your bedsheets.” Nanami remarks. In response, Hinata just grunts from across the room. He stares at a paragraph in his textbook, and digests nothing. “Why are you studying? Get your DS and race me.”

“It’s not going to snow forever, we’ll have class again eventually.”

“True…” she murmurs, turning over on Hinata's bed and staring at the back of his head. “... but exams aren’t for another few weeks, anyway. It just pushes the deadline back even more.”

Hinata hums in response. Nanami sighs. 

They sit in silence, then, with only the sounds of Nanami’s thumbs tapping buttons, and Hinata occasionally giving up on one page and flipping to another. After a while his eyes start to hurt, and so he looks to the left at his window, blinking rapidly and forcefully. His room is on the second floor, but he can still see the snow-covered lumps of a flower garden that was thriving just yesterday.

Despite his intimidating demeanor, Togami was pretty good at taking care of the blooms. It’s a shame that they’re all probably going to die. 

“It looks fluffy.” Nanami says. Hinata turns around to find her staring out the window too, with a sleepy smile on her face. She’s lying on her stomach, her eyes half-lidded. “Like a sheep… kind of.”

That makes Hinata release a quiet, breathy laugh. “It does, kind of.” Sort of like Komaeda’s hair, too, actually. His mouth quirks into a frown and smile at the same time, and it hurts his face a bit. 

“Hey… race me?” 

He lifts an eyebrow, finding Nanami looking up at him hopefully from his bed. She’s smiling slightly, and it’s then that Hinata realizes she’s still wearing her shoes, which are still a little wet from that morning. He grimaces, but in the end he acquiesces, because Nanami is his best friend. That’s reason enough. 

“Sure, but I’m gonna study some more afterward.”

Nanami nods, her hair bouncing over her shoulders. “Alright.” 

 

*

 

“The bananas are so useless.” Hinata mutters. His back is starting to get sore on the metal supports of his bed, and his left leg is falling asleep from sitting cross-legged on the floor. He cringes at the ticklish, yet jarring feeling of untangling his legs.

“... You’re changing the subject.” Nanami says after an abnormally (though normal for Nanami) long pause.

Hinata tries his best to keep his leg still, so as to minimize the unpleasant feeling. “No, I’m not.”

“... You are.”

Nanami crosses the finish line, and Hinata doesn’t even have to look at her to know she’s got a quaint, satisfied smile on her face. He knows that he could never win against her, but he races her anyway, because it’s fun. 

“What was the question again?”

“Now you’re stalling, Hinata-kun.” 

He puffs his cheeks full of air and glares at his screen as Nanami chooses the next course. 

“... Not that I blame you.”

“Look…” Hinata sighs. He scratches at his forearm, and idly glances at the window once more. The weather hasn’t changed. “I don’t even know how to answer that question. He’s just being… himself.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Well I mean…  _ yeah.  _ I care a lot about him but, doesn’t he bother you sometimes?” he asks incredulously, pressing down the A button a little too hard. If there’s one thing Hinata hates, it’s confrontation. Luckily, Nanami is an extremely gentle person, sort of.

“No…” Nanami says simply. “Komaeda-kun doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You have the patience of a saint, Nanami.”

The pearl-haired girl frowns, and she swivels so that her head is hanging off the bed next to Hinata’s shoulder. “Not really. It’s just… Komaeda-kun is Komaeda-kun.”

There’s a hush, then, that is only interrupted by the high-pitched sounds of their game systems. 

“But that answers my question. He  _ is  _ bothering you. Is it because of what happened?”

“I mean… I guess, yeah. Of course it is.” he swallows a pocket of air, and watches as Nanami passes him into first place, effortlessly. “If that hadn’t happened, then…”

“Is it because he’s a boy?”

“No, no.” Hinata fervently shakes his head, furrowing his eyebrows and blurring his vision. “Of course not. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s just…” he trails off, and Nanami hums. 

“You just don’t feel the same.” she says. She crosses the finish line again.

“That's not… to be honest, I'm not even sure about  _ that.” _

Hinata shuts his DS and bites his lip. He hates talking about this. Every time he leaves his dorm, he feels that he’ll have to run into Komaeda and give him an answer. 

… But, the other never asks for one. All he ever does is give Hinata the same sad smile he always has, since they were kids, and now, even  _ that  _ is infuriating, because he knows that inside Komaeda’s head it’s a meteor shower of self-deprecation. The guilt is doubled when Hinata thinks about how much courage it must have taken to tell him. He doesn’t want to shoot him down, but, he doesn’t want to lie to him either. He has no idea about his own feelings.

If this were anyone else but Komaeda, he probably wouldn’t be so worried. 

“Him being the way he is…” Nanami says in a soft voice. “When you think about that, you realize how much courage he had to gather to tell you, after being caught like that.”

“... Yeah.”

“What he did, it's not something unusual for him, but, it definitely crossed a line.” 

Sometimes, Hinata swears that Nanami can read his mind.

They sit in quiet again. 

“Both of you… you’re both my best friends.” Hinata says, more to himself than to Nanami. He knows that she appreciates this, though. The entire point of this conversation is to help him sort his thoughts out. “I wouldn’t want to hurt either of you, but, I can’t help the way I feel.  _ I'm pretty disturbed.” _

There’s a shuffle on the bed, and Nanami sighs a sigh that’s not quite morose, but more tired. She stiffly pats him on the head, before, more naturally, wrapping her arms around his neck in a comforting, friendly gesture. “... I’m sorry, Hinata-kun.”

“For what?”

“I should have told you… when I knew.”

“... No, I think I would have done the same thing you did.” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s almost like, he can’t help it.”

“He didn't know any better.” she affirms. “That’s why you need to talk to him, and tell him that it bothers you, so that… he knows what he’s doing wrong.”

Hinata sighs heavily. He bites his lip and glares at nothing, as though he had just swallowed something bitter. “I-I wonder what it would have been like, if he had told me normally…”

Nanami blinks, before letting go and sitting up. She rubs her right eye with a fist and yawns out an, “Oh?”

“I’d have been willing to give it a shot. But now I’m just… put-off. He’s excessive, you know? But you're right. I, I really need to talk to him.”

 

*

 

_ “My name is Komaeda Nagito, and I don’t like rice. I hope we can get along!” _

_ The small boy clenches both of his fists in front of himself, puffing up his cheeks and smiling. He makes his way to the desk the teacher had pointed him to, close to the hallway, and ignores the odd look he gets from her. His chair scoots audibly on the floor and he looks at the chalkboard, silently reading the messy writing of his own name. He had had to stand on his toes to write it. _

_ Classes go on just like they had at his old school; long and strenuous, but also interesting, as he’s always found them. They talk about how to write simple words regarding the weather in kanji, as well as doing some simple addition. Sometimes he spaces out of the lesson, but when that happens he sits up in his seat and makes himself look eager and alert, trying to make a good impression. _

_ Komaeda has always been quite fond of school.  _

_ When the recess between classes rolls around he sighs in the kind of relief one does after walking home. He slouches in his seat and looks at his shoes, swinging his feet a bit and wishing that they touched the ground. It’s not his turn to clean or anything, since he’s new, but at the same time he wishes that he had something to do. _

_ “Hey.” _

_ Komaeda blinks and feels a tap on his shoulder, turning to find a taller boy with short hair and olive-colored eyes. He doesn’t say anything in response, only stares at the other boy, since he’s never been approached so boldly before. At his old school, recess was always eerily quiet.  _

_ “Your shirt’s untucked.” the boy says, before wiping his nose with his wrist.  _

_ Komaeda starts, looking down and haphazardly stuffing the bottom of his shirt into his shorts, before realizing how impolite even that had been. His gaze darts quickly to the standing boy and he wibbles, flustered, only to find him yawning quite loudly. “... You look kinda scared.” he says, before offering to share the partially melted chocolate bar he has in his pocket.  _

 

*

 

“So… did you...  _ get any?” _

Hinata pauses mid-bite, noodles slipping from between his chopsticks. He blinks and sets the wooden utensils down sideways atop his cup of noodles, and looks at Hanamura like he has two heads.  _ “What?” _

Instead of answering, the short boy folds his arms and leans farther into the counter. In their pause, Souda meanders into the room and grabs a bag of chips, before leaving.

_ “And,”  _ Hanamura continues, “why are you eating  _ that  _ when my world class, award-winning crepes are in the fridge?”

Still staring, Hinata takes another mouthful of noodles. “It’s dinnertime.” he says around his bite. Hanamura scoffs.

“So Cup Noodles are better than my cooking?”

“No, it’s… I can’t very well have  _ crepes  _ for dinner.”

“Well, what did you have for dinner  _ last night?”  _

At this point, it doesn’t take much to detect when Hanamura is being lecherous. There’s only a certain lilt to his voice when it happens, a specific intonation, and Hinata can tell, right now, that the short man is thinking something perverted. With a sigh, Hinata looks the chef in the eye. “What are you talking about?”

“Uhmhmhm, I saw Nanami go into your room last night and not come out until morning. Mind explaining?”

He blinks, before replying. “Sure. She came over to hang out and ended up falling asleep.”

“Yes?” Hanamura says, before resting his elbow onto the counter and leaning in  _ far _ too close to Hinata’s face. “Where did  _ you  _ sleep?”

“In… my, room?” is the reply, oblivious, before he shoves more noodles in his mouth. 

_ “Oo- _ hohohoh _ oh _ my!” Hanamura croons, before the dining room door bursts open the second time this hour. 

“P-p- _ pleeeaase!”  _

The unmistakably shrill voice of Tsumiki fills the room, and before he knows it, a white and green blur flies across the room until it’s behind Hinata’s back. “Hinata-kun, please hide me!” whispers a quiet voice, and he turns to see Komaeda trying to hide behind his back, but, not doing a very good job. 

“Komaeda?” he says, nonplussed. The boy in question glares and holds a finger in front of his lips.

“Shhh!”

“K-Komaeda-san!” Tsumiki says as she bursts into the room, panting and resting her hands on her knees. She whips her gaze across the room, tightly holding a translucent bottle and wobbling her lips. Hinata feels Komaeda try to make himself smaller, and he stares at Tsumiki, wondering how the hell this hiding-behind-his-back thing is actually  _ working.  _ “H-h-have you two seen Komaeda-san? I’ve been looking for him all day to rebandage his arm, but… b-but he keeps running away from me!”

Komaeda sort of headbutts him in the back, and Hinata gives Tsumiki an awkward smile. Hanamura just stares on in amusement. 

“U-uh…” Hinata starts, and Komaeda headbutts again. He wants to glance behind himself, but knows that he’ll give Komaeda away if he does. “No, we haven’t.” he decides, and Tsumiki sighs, dejected. 

“O-okay.” she murmurs, before brightening again. “Th-then, I have to keep looking!”

With that, she sprints out of the room, and the sound of her feet stomping up the stairs can be heard a moment later. They wait a moment before they’re sure she’s gone, and Komaeda sighs in relief. “Thank you, Hinata-kun.” he says, standing to his full height once more and flicking something off his jacket. Hanamura dismisses himself to the kitchen, saying he needs to wash dishes. 

“Sure.” Hinata says, before leveling Komaeda with an odd look. “But why were you hiding from her? And- how did you manage to hide behind me? You’re taller than me!”

“I’m great at being sneaky.” Komaeda says with a bright smile, and he pockets his hands. “And have you ever been injured around her? She gets out the needles right away…”

Wryly, Hinata smiles, taking in another mouthful of noodles that are becoming lukewarm. “It’s for your own good.”

Komaeda rolls his eyes. “It’s not a big deal. Just a small cut.”

“Yeah, but with how often you get injured it ought to be taken care of. You said it yourself, you get hurt just about every week.”

The pale boy folds his arms and frowns, looking away. “So?” he asks, and Hinata doesn’t think he’s ever seen him act so childish. He grins.

“You’re scared of needles?” he teases, and Komaeda starts glancing at him, before sighing and shrugging.

“No, it’s just… excessive.”

Hinata’s smile falls a bit, and he tries not to dwell on how ironic that had sounded in his head. He looks at Komaeda, and the word ‘excessive’ rings in his mind. With a sigh, he straightens his posture. “I’ve got some leftover gauze from when I burnt my hand. Follow me.”

 

*

 

“How did you get cut again?” Hinata asks, and even after that Komaeda still looks around the room in wonder. 

“Kuwata broke my window with a baseball, and I got cut with a shard of glass.” he says, finally meeting eyes with Hinata. “It was surprising. The glass grazed me like a bullet!”

“Right.” Hinata says. He pulls the tab out of the small cardboard box of gauze and grabs the partially used roll of bandage with two fingers. “Can I see it? We still might have to get Tsumiki.”

“Ugh…”

Despite his reluctance, Komaeda pulls up his sleeve, and starts a rather intense staring contest with the wall. The cut itself really isn’t that bad; it looks mostly healed and scabbed over, but still it’s large enough that it should probably have at least a scarce bandage. It’s quite an angry shade, though, standing out against Komaeda’s pale complexion. Hinata wants to flinch just looking at it, but he doesn’t, instead deciding to keep a straight face. “It looks okay. But, I don’t really know what I’m doing…”

“I wish I could just do it myself.” Komaeda murmurs, finally looking back toward Hinata. “I sort of know what to do, but it’s in such an awkward place, and it’s not worth anyone else’s effort anyway.”

Hinata shakes his head. He doesn’t like the way the gauze feels against the tips of his fingers, but regardless he unravels it to what he thinks is a decent amount. “Komaeda, you need to stop saying things like that.” he says absently, and the other boy smiles. 

“I know, Hinata-kun. You’ve told me.” 

With that, all Hinata can manage is a sigh. Yes, he has told him. Time and time again, in fact, but the other never listens. He’ll chide Hinata about telling him again and again, yet, he’ll never acknowledge any of it. In the end, all Hinata can be left to do is wonder why the pale boy thinks of himself that way. 

“But it’s not that easy! I’m really not worth the effort. In fact, I’d say you’re strange for thinking that I am…”

Not even reacting, Hinata grabs Komaeda by the wrist and starts wrapping the cut. With a completely straight face, he takes a moment to free one hand and flick Komaeda in the forehead.

“Ow!”

Hinata realizes then that he’s not very good at wrapping wounds, so much so that he wonders if he’s wrapping it too tightly. Still, Komaeda says nothing about the issue, instead pouting and looking to the left once more. “That wasn’t necessary.” he says.

“Neither was the self-deprecating commentary.” 

“... Ugh.”

Allowing himself a small smile, Hinata finishes bandaging the wound, holding the end of the bandage down and using his other hand to grab a piece of tape. Once he’s done, he sits back, a bit proud yet a bit nervous from his work. Komaeda looks fine, minus the pout, and so Hinata supposes that this has been a success.

And he sighs. “Komaeda.”

“Mm?”

“About the other day…” 

The pale boy’s green eyes widen for half a second, before he wears a straight face once more. He tilts his head to the side like a dog, and Hinata stands, making his way to the bathroom to put the gauze back. If he thinks about it realistically he knows that he’s sort of stalling; as he opens the door to the shared bathroom, he can feel Komaeda’s gaze piercing his back. 

Apparently, Komaeda decides to break the silence. “You can forget I said anything, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata tries not to snort when he leaves the bathroom. “Yeah, no. I kind of can’t.”

“Why not?”

Sighing, Hinata avoids Komaeda’s questioning gaze as he makes his way to the bed, sitting next to him. They sit there for much longer than necessary, and in the process Hinata only succeeds in shattering his nerves bit by bit. 

“Look...” he starts, and Komaeda turns so that he’s looking at Hinata’s profile. His eyes are wide and questioning, and that causes Hinata’s heart to palpitate. He  _ really, truly  _ is not a fan of confrontation. Then again, he’s not sure anybody is. “You’re one of my best friends, Komaeda.”

The white-haired boy nods. “You say that a lot. I appreciate it, but you have really awful taste for being friends with someone like me.”

“That’s, that’s the thing.” Hinata jumps at the opportunity, looking Komaeda in the eye. He bites his lip. “About what you told me-”

“You don’t have to dance around the subject so much, Hinata-kun.”

At that, he blinks. “Huh?”

“You can tell me that you’re disgusted with me, I completely understand. If I were someone like you, I’d be horrified.” Komaeda shuts his eyes in resignation, though he still has a calm smile on his face. “There’s no need to try and spare my feelings. You really are too nice to me…”

“Komaeda, no.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Please, forget about it. Or, you could even stop talking to me altogether. I would definitely understand. Oh, but, it probably doesn’t matter to you whether I understand or not-”

_ “Komaeda.” _

The pale boy shuts his mouth and frowns. Idly, he pushes his sleeve back down over his arm, and Hinata sighs. 

_ “Please,  _ stop saying things like that.”

In response, all Komaeda does is narrow his eyes into slits, before averting his gaze to the corner of the room. Once more, Hinata sighs. It occurs to him that he’s been doing that a lot today. At the look on Komaeda’s face, he’s ashamed to admit that he feels pity. He thinks to himself that it should instead be sympathy, or worry, or, well, not  _ pity,  _ and so he sets his hands onto his friend’s shoulders and hugs him, so that he doesn’t have to see how pitiful his face looks. 

Komaeda and Nanami have been his best friends since he was small. He doesn’t want to lose either of them, even to something like… this.

After a bit of silence, in which Komaeda is resolutely frozen and Hinata feels bad about that, one of them decides to speak. “... I really wish you hadn’t seen me, Hinata-kun.”

Part of Hinata wants to say that he feels the same, but, really, he’s glad that he had found out when he did. 

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” he decides, resolute. “I understand how you feel, and I accept it.”

“... Hinata-kun…”

“But that is…  _ really  _ not a healthy way to express it.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“You’ve apologized enough.” Hinata says. It occurs to him then, with the scratchy fabric making an imprint in his chin, that Komaeda is wearing a green sweater vest. It looks quite nice, actually, but that’s beside the point. 

“I’m amazed you’re still talking to me.”

Hinata suppresses the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s because I care about you.”

Komaeda twitches a bit, his feet dragging against the carpet. He shivers and his hair stands on end when Hinata starts rubbing his back. Really, he’s far too lucky…

“I know you’re a good person, and you… don’t mean to do anything bad. Nanami and I got rid of all the cameras.” Hinata says, before noticing that his pale friend is shaking a bit. He stills, and Komaeda pushes him away. 

“Don’t patronize me.” he says, and Hinata blinks. “I knew full well what I was doing. It was terrible. I was basically stalking you.”

“You… don’t have to say it so bluntly.”

“But that’s what it was. I wasn’t strong enough to just ignore my impulses, and it’s my fault. I know that it’s bad.”

The look on Komaeda’s face is so bitter that Hinata feels mildly intimidated. Still, he knows that he needs to stand his ground. “Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve done bad things to you too.”

At that, the other seems mildly shocked, as if the very idea of Hinata doing anything  _ remotely  _ bad is preposterous. 

“Yeah. Remember that time when I took Nanami to the concert, and I said I only had one extra ticket? I actually had two. I didn’t invite you because I know that’s not your thing, and you would kind of drag us down. Then again, it’s not really Nanami’s thing either… And that one time when you puked in the hall back in high school and I just walked away because I was grossed out. Like, I should have at least taken you to the nurse’s office. In fact, all of high school in general. I was awful to you.”

“Hinata-kun, those things are all trivial.” Komaeda says. He’s got one eyebrow quirked, as though he’s both confused and exasperated. “Besides, the good things you do outweigh the bad.”

“Exactly!” Hinata says, smiling. “The good things you do outweigh the bad.”

At that, Komaeda looks affronted, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“I don’t want you to misunderstand…” Hinata continues. “I don’t mind what you told me that day. I just, I guess I just wanted to talk to you about it.”

“Oh.” is all Komaeda says. His expression goes from affronted to unreadable, as it so often does. After all these years, Hinata still isn’t sure if that’s a good or bad sign. Nevertheless, he goes on. 

“What I’m trying to say is… you can express it, normally. Don’t try to hold yourself back because of some inferiority complex. I know you well enough to realize that you did what you did because you didn’t think you deserved to act on your feelings, uh, normally, but, you’re fine. Just be yourself around me, okay? You’re my best friend.”

Still, Komaeda says nothing. Hinata is starting to get anxious. “And I mean, I'm pretty romantically challenged, honestly…” he trails off, but bites the inside of his cheek and keeps going. “I'm not even sure if my feelings for you are entirely platonic. Basically, I mean… I'm willing to try anything, as long as it's with you.”

Silence, still. Komaeda just continues to stare at him, with a blank and despondent look on his face. Hinata starts to crack. “Um, please say something?”

The quiet reigns for just a bit longer, before, at last, Komaeda coughs a little awkwardly and looks away. His cheeks start to turn pink, and like the cut on his arm, Hinata thinks that the color stands out boldly against his complexion. 

“I…” the pale boy starts, before clamping his both shut. At least, Hinata thinks, this is progress. “When you told me to come to your room, I thought for sure it was to tell me to stay away from you.”

Hinata shakes his head. Komaeda takes a breath. “I consider Hinata-kun’s words very important, so I'll take some time to think about the other things you said… about… my worth.” he puts a hand to his chin in cliche thought. In an odd state of fugue Hinata takes note of how hard the snow is still falling outside, in the middle of July. It really is quite odd. Komaeda continues. “But, since you say it's alright, then… Hinata-kun, do you mind if I restate what I said the other day?”

A little confused, Hinata only blinks. Komaeda looks at him for a while before shaking his head. 

“Never mind. You already answered that question…” he sets his hands on his lap, and smiles in such a bright way that his eyes shut from the mirth of it. “Then, Hinata-kun, even if the world were to end tomorrow… I think I'll be in love with you forever, or at least, until that bad end happens. I love you.”


End file.
